THE HOCKEY NEWS CLASSIFIED

It’s Hurts Our Man Beaton But He Praises GM Francis

YOU’VE GOT TO give Emile Francis credit, even though I didn’t want to. Francis was surrounding himself with mediocrity, I said. Francis was being taken in trades by more astute general managers, I said. Francis seemed to have a compulsion to collect fourthline type players, I said. Wrong again, Zamboni breath. Francis hasn’t just built a playoff contender. He appears to have the pieces in place for a team capable of contending for the Stanley Cup within a few years. Think about it. What are the components of a Cup champion? • A standout center. Esposito, Clarke, Lemaire, Trottier, and Gretzky were the peerless pivots on Cup winners over the last 15 years. Hartford’s Ron Francis is not far below that class. • A super-sniper. Cournoyer, Espo. MacLeish, Lafleur, Bossy and Kurri have held that role. Sylvain Turgeon…

FAN FORUM

Let your voice be heard! Send your comments to Fan Forum, THE HOCKEY NEWS, 85 Scarsdale Rd., Suite 100, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 2R2. THN reserves the right to edit all submissions. I FEEL COMPELLED to express my appreciation to Rich Chere for the kind manner which he used in his Jan. 3 article on Hector Marini. His sensitivity in handling this issue, too, was appreciated by family, friends and Hector, himself. I can vividly remember Hector as a young boy on the outdoor rink in the schoolyard across from the Balsam Street house in Timmins. Regardless of the cold factor, you could be sure he was out there skating and shooting. I’ve seen him play since he was in minor hockey and what he lacked in skill, he made up in…

Listless Loob A Big Concern For Calgary

CALGARY—Really, there is only one way to look at it. Calgary Flames are testing the trade waters for a game-breaking scorer because they haven’t develop one of their own. Bob Johnson’s pre-season candidates for stardom—Carey Wilson, Dan Quinn and, especially, Hakan Loob—simply haven’t taken that one step ahead. Loob’s listless play is of particular concern because the Flames expected—perhaps unrealistically—a mammoth season from him. Two years ago in the Canada Cup, Loob outplayed countryman Mats Naslund by a substantial margin. Today, Naslund is among the National Hockey League’s premier scorers and Loob isn’t even in the top 100. What happened? No one can quite put their finger on why Loob’s play has been so uninspired. The goals wouldn’t come and as his fragile confidence eroded, so did every other part of his game. That’s why Loob…